What is identity?
At the Menier to see, well the really quite strange, Marjorie Prime
This (Pulitzer nominated) 2014 play – set around 2050 (but thank goodness dressed 2023) – examines what makes an individual – through the McGuffin of holographic AI simulations.
If what we are is not who we think we are, nor what you (who knows us) think we are, but what we think you think we are (this is not stated as such in the play), then can we recreate a loved one just through our own memories? What if we suppress, or indeed can no longer remember things? What if the simulacrum offers us memories which aren’t true? What if the re-creation is made up of more than one person’s memories – does this make the simulacrum more, or less, accurate.
The play starts with 85 year old Marjorie interacting with a hologram of her (dead) husband – as she slips into dementia and her family try to use the AI sim (the Prime) to ground her in a reality – and moves on from there.
More would be a spoiler – but it doesn’t get any less complex. As I said, the AI here is a McGuffin (it doesn’t rehearse any of the current fears and hopes for AI) – but it does ask questions about personality, and personal relationships.
A 4 hander, with excellent performances throughout, (and in particular from Anne Reid and Nancy Carroll) it asks actors to move from playing people to machines in a convincing manner, and is delivered in spades! It is at times genuinely moving, and, depending on your own views about personality and an AI after life, either encouraging or depressing (the ending is certainly downbeat).
There are seats available in most performances (perhaps sadly). I think worth going to, for the acting and production at least, and the ideas are actually thought provoking.